I would not be disappointed if I woke up tomorrow and saw that this city and others like it had become parking lots. I do think we need to be less worried about killing supposedly "innocent" civilians and more worried about putting our soldiers in the best position to do their job with the fewest amount of casualties on our side. I honestly do not want to just slaughter people, but when battles break out we should not limit our response and our soldiers ability to fight and defend themselves. We need to knock these guys out and rule with a well disciplined iron fist until order is restored. I do not care if europe and kerry are going to portray us as conquerers instead of liberators. Raze Fallujah link
There are 250,000 people in Falluja. We have them surrounded with 1,200 Marines. Unless you are talking about carpet bombing (which would make you a lunatic), we don't have enough boots on the ground to deal with Falluja properly. The miltary has been complaining privately all along that we need many more troops to do the job right in Irag. To quell these mass uprisings by armed militia will take another 100,000+ troops. But that would make Rumsfeld violate the first rule of holes. "If you are stuck in a hole, don't keep digging". I don't think he will. We could still be in Somalia. Instead we got out when the getting was good and let the ungrateful Somalis stew in their own juices, fight their own civil war, and kill each other. We tried to help during a famine, they tried to fight us instead of being grateful, so fugg 'em. That's my scenario for Irag. If the Iraqis don't have the brains or moral fiber to cooperate with us to get a government set up so we can leave quickly, then we just leave it to them. If they don't like our plan then adios and grow one of their own. We need to start gearing up for war with Korea, because those crazy gooksters are determined to start one.
I will take being called a lunatic from someone who believes Clinton took us out of Somalia "when the getting was good". It looks like you and Osama got the same message from our pull out there. Regardless of whether you thought we should be there in the first place to pull out now instead of seeing it through correctly would be the worse thing we could do. You seem to have a little Spanish in your blood. How is pulling out and letting them fight a civil war and kill themselves any better than carpet bombing a city? When the war bogged down for a few days last spring were you with the group that was complaining about not having enough troops then? another 100,000+ troops???? Why would we need to push our total up to the amount we had when we entered Iraq in March 2003? We may need to put more troops there but not that much, and more troops is not going to help unless we also allow for the fact that to take out these guys civilians are going to get killed in the process. If the actual innocent civilians want to live they can cooperate with us. If they choose not to they can die with the rest of them if they are allowing their buildings and houses to be used by the militia. Also if you believe that our marines need help because they are having to take on all 250,000 people in Fallujah than why would you be against leveling the entire city. Even if we could send in 100,000 troops into that city why would we want them to get ambushed? I am sure you do not believe all in that city are fighting us, but you should probably not use the population in comparison to the amount of marines we have.
Call me a lunatic if you will, but the monsters in Fallujah should be happy that I'm not calling the shots as President, because if I were, there would be no Fallujah today...only a smoldering crater with a radioactive half-life of 45 years where Fallujah once stood. "Oh, but innocent people would die", you say? As far as I'm concerned, I didn't SEE any innocent people in that town. When 10 year old thugs can desecrate a corpse that has been dead for less than an hour, there are no innocent people around. These "terrorists" don't know what terror is. Terror is that mushroom cloud that can appear out of nowhere at any given time. Sound crazy? Sure it does...but no crazier than flying jetliners into buildings full of innocent people with no warning. And anybody who thinks that that incident and what's happening today are two separate issues is kidding himself/herself. So call me a lunatic...I beg to differ. I view myself as an American who's had it up to here with the two-bit punks of this world who don't know their place, and hold the PC wusses among us hostage to their every violent whim. These punks understand and respect one thing and one thing only: OVERWHELMING FORCE...something that terrorizes THEM. These guys are little more than run-of-the-mill schoolyard bullies when you break them down to their very essence...and we all know how you should deal with a schoolyard bully. It's been almost 60 years since the world saw a mushroom cloud detonated in anger...maybe the world needs a little reminder.
Quote by Red55, We could still be in Somalia. Instead we got out when the getting was good and let the ungrateful Somalis stew in their own juices, fight their own civil war, and kill each other. We tried to help during a famine, they tried to fight us instead of being grateful, so fugg 'em. That's my scenario for Irag. If the Iraqis don't have the brains or moral fiber to cooperate with us to get a government set up so we can leave quickly, then we just leave it to them. If they don't like our plan then adios and grow one of their own. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The kind of thinking in your statement is the exact reason 9-11 happened. Osama and his crew just saw how we botched that operation and ran like scared dogs. There is no doubt that a sign of weakness only equals to more terrorism not less. Perfect example is Isreal and the Palestinians.......... Suicide bombers killed Isrealis for years until Isreal had enough and started to fight back, you could argue that its got worse but I disagree and will argue we've stopped Isreal from doing what they need to do for too long. Spain is another example.. They have a terrorist attack and the whole country votes in a different government. The new government is confusing because they say they will pull troops out of Iraq and haven't done it yet that I'm aware of. They say one thing and do another, Spain has appeased the terrorist by voting this government in and this government isn't a steadfast in their policies. And then they find more bombs on train tracks in Spain.... hmmm I will say we both agree with something and that is South Korea but to me its not just about them starting a war, its about them selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
I think we should release Saddam, put him back in power and let these idiots get what they deserve. We just make it plain to him he cannot develop wmd and he cannot support terrorism. We keep his econonmy under US control and let him deal with these morons. At the very least, threaten to. We also need to let the Kurds set up a separate state in N. Iraq. Maybe we should just let the Kurds deal with these Shiiteheads.
I didn't mean to call you a lunatic, amigo. What I said (in parenthesis) was that if you believed in carpet bombing a town you were a lunatic. I should have said if ONE believed in carpet bombing a town ONE was a lunatic, since I was basically referring to the story you linked calling for the razing of Falluja. And I understand and agree that we have to pick a right time and place to leave and not give the impression of weakness like when Reagan packed up and left Lebanon to the Syrians after the Marines were killed. But that has to be balanced against staying and taking more "Blackhawk Down" casualties that don't get us anywhere. If we learned anything at all from the Vietnam experience it is that when we are in a war we need to either go all out with everything we've got and defeat the enemy . . . or if faced with a quagmire, reassess and get out quickly. The worst thing we can do is just sit there and do neither. There is a difference between quitting and losing. We didn't lose the war in Vietnam, hell, we won every battle. We quit the war because it wasn't getting us anywhere, it just took us too long to realize it. The Somalia exit was too quick perhaps and Vietnam too long. But quitting was the right thing to do in each instance ... and it was not a surrender. Also this business in Fallujah is not Al Quaida terrorism caused by our weaknesses. It is an insurrection against the miltary occupation of their country. If we were not there, this wouldn't be happening. I'm sure you are just making a lame joke, and I am sympathetic. I too, would love to see some kind of punishing retaliation against these gun-toting bastards. But flattening a whole city would just make us Nazi's in the minds of the whole world. No, I'm surprised we aren't seeing more Special Forces and SEAL operations against these guerillas. The Marines are trained to storm beaches, this thing in Fallujah is a job for the commando's, not the B-52's.
Hate to be the one to break this to you Red, but we're not real popular w/ the rest of the globe right now, anyway. And you know what? That's fine by me. The RIGHT course of action is not always the most POPULAR course of action. That's where George Bush and Bill Clinton differ...Bill Clinton was more concerned with polls and popularity than with doing the right thing. A real leader sometimes has to do things that AREN'T popular in the best interest of his country. Going back to your scenario where commandos clean out Fallujah...it'll never happen. Too big of a rat's nest, too many of our troops would die. A more realistic scenario would be to lay siege to the city and starve them into submission...nothing gets in, nothing gets out...with the occasional artillery pounding thrown in for good measure.
